


it would be of small avail to talk of magic in the air

by SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, but then i wrote another part of it while eating funyuns with a spoon so who knows, college jon, i dont know how to tag this, i wrote part of this while listening to gethsemane from jcss on repeat so thats why its like that, jons carousel adventure, mag 165, statement of jonathan sims regarding a really shitty trip to the zoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24086125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse/pseuds/SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse
Summary: Moping around in the dark was maudlin. It was a cliche. He didn’t need to stand in the shadows with his coat collar turned up like some moody poet, the slump of his shoulders silhouetted against whatever light source there was that didn’t disturb the bats, to be properly sad. And hewasbeing properly sad. And he was expressing that sadness. He was dealing constructively with his emotions.After Georgie breaks up with him, Jon goes to the London Zoo.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Georgie Barker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56





	it would be of small avail to talk of magic in the air

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely love the headcanon that Jon had a thrilling experience on a carousel as a direct result of breaking up with Georgie, so here it is! Also I based Jon's vaguely mentioned outfit on this (https://mod2amaryllis.tumblr.com/post/616835869578608640/hot-jon-this-hot-jon-that-we-cannot-ignore-that) fantastic piece of art by mod2amaryllis.

Jon really wasn’t sure how he had ended up at the zoo. It was one of those things that came over him when he was upset, the sudden urge to make things worse, to ruin them entirely. Not impulse, exactly, but something like willful self-destruction. So today it had been take a right, then a left, then get on the tube, off, on again, off, another right, then a third, all the while thinking how inconvenient he was making things for himself, what a nightmare it would be when he needed to find his way home again. Maybe he’d wanted to get lost? But his memory wouldn’t allow for that, and then suddenly he was in front of the zoo, and spending a good portion of this month’s food budget on a ticket had seemed like such a horrible idea that he’d done it immediately.

And now he was at the zoo. There had been a man near the entrance selling balloons and Jon had bought one and tied it around his wrist, and as he walked it bobbed behind him, occasionally knocking against the head of some particularly tall unfortunate. If Jon hadn’t had enough self-awareness to know when he was sounding like an idiot, he would have said the balloon was himself. Aimlessly combative, looking for a fight but too fragile to take a punch. Dragged through life by the neck. Blue. He snorted at that one. A middle-aged couple in matching hats glared at him. He glared back.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, when Georgie dumped him. They were approaching the end of their last year at Oxford, and all the normal things that broke people up — stress, distance, irreconcilable career paths — had been gradually sharpening in Jon’s focus. And that’s what he had been preparing himself for. The moment when Georgie said she couldn’t hack long distance. The moment when Georgie said that she didn’t want to share an apartment with someone who had multiple dedicated clothes chairs. And he would have been fine (he was sure) if that was what Georgie had said. Sad in the way anyone would be sad to lose someone they loved, of course, but understanding. Mature.

It was a warm day for London, and sunny enough that Jon knew he looked ridiculous in the jacket he was wearing. The zoo stank in the heat, a mix of overpriced kiosk food and animal waste that wasn’t familiar enough to be nostalgic. He’d only been here once before, on a school trip in Year 6, and had gotten separated from the rest of his class after being left behind in the bat exhibit. In his defense, bats were very interesting, and, he belatedly realized, his teacher had apparently lied when she told him he was banned for life. 

He considered heading there now, but decided against it. Moping around in the dark was maudlin. It was a cliche. He didn’t need to stand in the shadows with his coat collar turned up like some moody poet, the slump of his shoulders silhouetted against whatever light source there was that didn’t disturb the bats, to be properly sad. And he _was_ being properly sad. And he was expressing that sadness. He was dealing constructively with his emotions. 

That was what Georgie had started with. Or no, she’d asked him if they could talk first, in a tone that was so carefully casual he’d known something was wrong. He’d sat down on her bed. She’d offered him some tea from a hot plate. He’d said yes, please, reflexively, and she’d sat down next to him and laid a hand on his upper arm and before she could even start talking he’d said it was alright. That he could see where she was coming from, of course. (That exact phrasing, damn him.) She’d asked him what he meant, and he’d said that it made sense for them to break up, that he knew she was figuring out a future for herself and that he knew there might not be a place for him, for them, in that future, and that he really wasn’t upset at all, and that she shouldn’t worry about him.

And then she had said “Oh, would you just _stop!”_

Jon drifted through the zoo for a while, from one exhibit to the other, leaving whenever he felt like someone was watching him. His jaw was starting to work in the way that meant he needed a cigarette, but even the washrooms were too crowded to sneak one, and anyway smoke would probably make the penguins keel over, or something. He was beginning to feel actual regret now, not just the vindictive joy he’d felt earlier at making his own life slightly worse. Maybe it was time to leave. It was still possible to salvage the day, get some work done and go to bed early enough to feel responsible.

He walked toward the exits of the zoo, already fishing around in his pockets for his lighter. It was Georgie’s lighter, he realized. She’d lent it to him the other day and he’d forgotten to give it back. She’d lent him a lot of things, actually; he remembered a bottle opener and a book of short stories and a jumper of hers she’d liked to see him wear. Those were maybe the sort of items you could leave in a bag tied to one’s doorknob, but was that following proper breakup etiquette? It seemed more polite to pop in for a minute, thank her for the things and ask if he’d forgotten anything. But what if she didn’t want to see him? Or worse, what if she wanted to talk again? And then she had some of his things, and she’d get to decide how _that_ interaction went. Maybe he could let her go first and just copy whatever she did, but she’d see right through that and think he was an idiot… 

Jon was on the verge of stopping in the nearest washroom for a cigarette and the penguins could go _fuck_ themselves when he heard a strange sort of circusy sound, something that reminded him of the opening bit of “Brighton Rock.” He turned, the soles of his boots scraping slightly on the pavement (he’d been walking rather more quickly than he’d thought) and saw that the sound was coming from the tinny speakers of the zoo’s carousel. Probably not “Brighton Rock,” then. He stood and looked at it for a moment. It was the sort of thing that seemed impossibly grand when you were a child and was later revealed, upon your returning as an adult to reclaim that sense of wonder, to be so much smaller than you remembered, so much more ordinary. And it was like that with everything, wasn’t it? Nothing was ever as good as you’d been told it would be, because they’d fooled you with a coat of paint and some polished brass and you’d been stupid enough to believe them, you’d never even _thought_ it was a lie because why shouldn’t there be something so beautiful in the world? And then there was Jon, lost in the bat exhibit of life (shut up, he told himself) and he’d never even gotten to _see_ the carousel when it was beautiful, he’d just been _hoping—_

A little girl ran in front of him, laughing and pulling on the arm of someone Jon assumed was her father, and without putting much thought into it he followed them to the carousel’s gate. The attendant operating it gave him a look and a pair of scissors, which Jon took to mean that balloons were not permitted on the carousel. He cut the string on his wrist and let the balloon drift away, and the attendant muttered something he probably would not have said to children and let him board. Jon selected a pony adorned in multicolored swirls and settled himself atop it.

The first thing Jon had thought was that he’d been wrong. That Georgie wasn’t trying to break up with him, or she hadn’t been until he’d opened his stupid mouth. But then she’d dropped her hand off his arm and just stared at him, really stared at him like she was trying to figure out how the parts of his face fit together under his skin. “Shit,” she’d said finally, “this is why I can’t _do_ this, Jon. I just can’t anymore.”

“What is, ah, what do you mean by ‘this’?” Jon had given her a kind of marionette smile. “The first ‘this’, I mean. The second one I think is...yes.”

“‘This’ is — God.” She’d flailed for a moment. He’d taken her by surprise. “Do you remember when your grandmother was in the hospital?” Of course Jon remembered. A good two weeks of hell, most of them spent trying to convince his grandmother that yes, she _did_ need to find a flat with fewer stairs. “And you had to keep going back and forth from school to check on her, and write your papers on the tube and all that.”

“And I made enough typos to last my entire academic career.”

“That’s it exactly!” Georgie had almost bounced in place. “Every time I asked you how things had gone, how you were feeling, you’d have a little joke like that. You had a joke for everything. And then you’d change the subject.”

Jon’s head knocked against the pole he was holding as the carousel started with a jerk. He sat up quickly, trying to regain his balance on the thing. Maybe staying upright was easier for small children. Maybe he was just inexplicably bad at riding carousels. In either case, this one turned slowly enough that it didn’t really matter. He leaned forward a little, as if that would make it go any faster, and snickered under his breath when he saw several children doing the same. Then the carousel sped up, and the horses began to move up and down in earnest. Jon felt a little swoop in his stomach. There was something.

Jon had blinked at Georgie once, then again for emphasis. “What’s wrong with joking?”

“Because you didn’t really think things were that funny. You were upset.”

She hadn’t phrased it as a question, but Jon had still felt the need to answer. “Of course I was! Of course. But I didn’t — Why should you be upset too? I didn’t want to — to burden you.” There was a word. That was clear. He had been sure.

“But, Jon, if feelings are a burden,” Georgie had spoken so slowly, just then. He hadn’t been sure if she was trying not to cry or if she was trying to explain something to him, some fundamental concept beyond his grasp, something he should have known by now. “If feelings are a burden to you, how do you think that makes _me_ feel when I’m upset?”

The carousel’s music seemed to be getting louder. Jon couldn’t tell if this was the truth or if his perception of the carousel had somehow grown in his mind. The lights on it were brighter too, even though it had to be mid-afternoon at the latest. They burned themselves into Jon’s vision, haloing the heads of the children in front of him. One of them was waving, and Jon looked past him to see a ring of parents leaning against the fence, cameras in hand. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind him being in their pictures. He found himself smiling when they started yelling for it anyway, even though they certainly couldn’t be talking to him. Their faces started to blur. He really couldn’t see how the carousel could go any faster, and yet— 

“I feel like I don’t _know_ you,” Georgie had said. She was crying now, undeniably, but only very gently. Tearing up, more like. 

“Of course you know me,” Jon had said. He hadn’t known what else to say. He had felt his chest tightening up, his throat starting to close around his words. “And you don’t — you’re never a burden to me when you’re upset. I like — helping you. You know. Being there for you.”

“But _I_ want to be there for _you,_ Jon. I want to talk to you about your problems, I want to make you happy when you’re sad, I mean, come on, that’s just—” She had taken a long, slow breath. “And you won’t _let_ me. I don’t know you at all, Jon.”

“Well. Well, alright.” Jon had stood up without knowing what he was going to do next. He’d looked around for somewhere to set his mug, or just somewhere to look, and Georgie had taken it from him, set it on her nightstand. “I don’t — Should I leave?” Understanding. Mature.

“Jon.” She’d spoken so softly. Suddenly she’d become the reasonable one, comforting him about — what? “Do you want to leave?” Some break in him he couldn’t see well enough to fix. Some _thing_ that stood between him and everyone else, impenetrable only on his side, a fucking one-way mirror of inadequacy. “Jon. Do you want to leave?”

“Please tell me,” he’d said. Quiet. Calm. “Either way. I won’t be angry.”

Georgie’s face had shut, then. Jon had heard the expression before and he’d understood it now. When she’d spoken again her voice was flat. “Fine,” she’d said. “Leave.”

And he had. And now he was at the zoo. The carousel had steadied again, its wild acceleration settling into an even trot. Jon patted the mane of his horse, not really sure why and the girl on the horse next to him, the one he’d followed onto the carousel, actually, laughed. “It isn’t a _real_ horse,” she said.

“Well, yes,” said Jon, and was about to say something very accurate and horrific about the pole the horse had sticking through its back, but caught himself. “I’m just pretending.”

“I like to pretend too,” said the girl. “The best thing to pretend is that the horse came to life and it’s running away. You have to close your eyes.” She did so, then opened them a second later to glare very pointedly at Jon. “Do it.”

“Right,” said Jon. He closed his eyes, although of course he was past the age when things like this would work. Still. Maybe if he pretended it hard enough, the horse would come to life, would wrench free of its anatomically unpleasant anchor and bring him home. Save him the tube fare, at least. Or maybe it would just keep going. Dash off the edge of a pier somewhere. Hydroplane him over the sea. That was the way to do things. Take off running and never stop.

The carousel began to slow, then stilled. Jon kept his eyes closed. There was the momentary shuffle of children dismounting and new riders boarding, the whack of somebody’s shin against a saddle and a brief fight over who got to sit on the tiger, but nobody bothered him. Then the music started itself over with a crackle, and the lightbulbs began to flash, and the horses took their first stiff steps off the ground. Jon kept pretending.

**Author's Note:**

> Tune in next week when I write 2000 words about Jon never having seen Kill Bill. Just kidding I'm probably not going to do that.


End file.
